


Dancing Around the Lies We Tell

by plinys



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Hydra (Marvel), Though It Could Be Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 11:12:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1548524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes people don't have a choice in what they are, a legacy to follow shapes Jemma Simmons' path from childhood, no matter how much she wishes she could change things for his sake. </p>
<p>Also known as, Hydra Sleeper Agent Simmons falls for somebody that would never be Hydra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dancing Around the Lies We Tell

**Author's Note:**

> Because I am totally in favor of the Hydra Agent Simmons HCs that have been floating about, and because of her hesitation before assuring Fitz that she's not Hydra, this fic was created.

1.

When she’s eight years old, she wins her elementary science fair.

Looking back on her life Jemma could easily have pinpointed that as the exact moment her blissful childhood ended and her future began.

She remembers most clearly though, a man in a dark suit that crouches down beside her listening to the young girl’s eager explanation of her project.

He smiles at her with bright white teeth reminding her of a shark, “we’re so lucky to have found you,” he says before standing up and moving over to talk with her mother.

Jemma’s eyes follow the interaction between them, her mother ever neurotic and shaky, stands completely still for a moment, she looks pleased and angry at the same time, it is a complicated emotion that Jemma will not understand until years later. When she stands in a similar position.

That night when they return home, her mother brings her into her office, a room that she had always been prohibited from entering before, and gives her a gift that changes Jemma’s life.  

“Is it an octopus,” Jemma asks, turning the pin over in her hand, fingers running across the ridges.

“Octopi have eight legs,” her mother corrects her, which Jemma knew, but that didn’t answer her question.

“A squid?”

“No, this is far more important than any sea creature,” she says, “this, little one, is your legacy.”

It was amazing how many implications a simple pin could have on the rest of her future.

From that moment she is propelled forward, with tutors in similar black suits to that that the shark man had worn, who tell her how proud they are, how accomplished they are, how lucky everyone is. They tell her that she is destined for greatness, that with a brain like hers she is worth so much more than any of their other recruits.

When they leave each day they whisper, “hail hydra,” in her ear, and she returns in with all the enthusiasm a child can muster.

She spends more time with her mother than she ever has before, and learns secrets about the woman that she thought knew.

Now she can see through the nuances, she can see the subtle shifts and the chances, she can see the shadows in the corner of the room.

Some nights she squeezes her eyes tightly shut wishing she couldn’t see any of it anymore.

Other nights she opens her eyes wide and begs to learn her.

Her curiosity will always be her downside

Jemma watches with amazement as the neurotic act slips away and is replaced with a cool mentality, eyes forward, not a flicker of emotion on her face.

“It takes practice,” her mother explains in slow tones, “you must practice being somebody else, somebody no one suspects.”

Just as nobody suspects a flighty housewife with a severe case of OCD, Jemma must too become somebody that nobody suspects.

She develops a persona, a series of lies she tells herself when looking in the mirror. She practices blushing on cue, ducking her head, stammering over her words. Jemma hides the curious and confident Hydra operative behind pastel jumpers and an innocent act.

Her two PhDs get her in the door with SHIELD, but it’s the sweet innocent act that gets her a spot at their academy. Nobody finding any reason to suspect her at all. She just has to make it through the academy they tell her, then she’ll be given a high level position in the organization and begin her real purpose.

Until then though, she feels just like everybody else.

While she’s at the academy though she can almost forget who she’s working for. She can focus on science, because in the end that’s what she is, a scientist. It doesn’t matter whose side she’s on, who knows the truth and who knows the lies, because one way or another Jemma Simmons is going to change the world.

 

2.

She spends the first few days of classes squinting at her fellow trainees, wondering how many of them come from legacies such as hers, how many will be recruited along the way, and how many of them will be loyal SHIELD agents until somebody puts a bullet through their heart. .

Eventually she gives up, sends an encoded message off to her mother, asking for the who is who.

The next day she’s given extensive files of all of her classmates, documents and information that is clearly above her clearance level.

That’s how she knows the second that she meets him that Leopold Fitz is completely unattached.

They’re assigned as partners in one of their introduction classes, the two youngest trainees grouped together because nobody else wanted them.

She finds that almost ironic, when she realizes that she is paired up with the only person who might be her competition.

Jemma doesn’t expect to make friends at the academy, allies maybe if she’s lucky, but never friends.

Jemma has never had many friends. There are too many secrets in her way, too many skeletons in her closet, too busy to take the time to get to know people.

That is why she’s quite surprised when she ends up making a friend.

She tries to lie to herself and say that she’s only doing it to keep her cover up, but that’s so far from the truth it’s not even funny.

The fact of the matter is she genuinely likes him.

She likes the way he runs his fingers through his hair making his curls even messier when he’s nervous. She likes how he always picks scissors first when they play roshambo. She likes how he stares at a laundry machine like it is the most confusing thing in the world, when he could probably take it apart and put it back together in ten minutes. She likes how he talks a mile a minute when he’s excited about things, but is a master at the silent treatment on the rare moments that they fight.

She finds she likes everything about him.

Jemma’s plan had always sort of been to recruit him, she felt such a connection with him, surely if she suggested it he would be inclined to follow her. They could be the the best scientists Hydra had if they worked together, but every time she opened her mouth to suggest it, the words would freeze in her throat.

 

3.

The holidays come around it seems almost natural as they make plans together. They’re both wanting to go home for the few weeks they have of a break from classes at the academy.

She makes a plan to tell him about hydra over winter break, that when she invites him over to her house, she’ll break the news to him, and assuming he takes it well then everything should fall right into order

When he invites her to stop by his place at the beginning winter break those plans stop in their tracks.

“My mom always throws this little party for Hanukkah, it’s awful really, but I thought, I mean I was wondering if,” Fitz says, fumbling over his words where he’s normally far more confident, “do you want to come with?”

Jemma pauses, taken aback by his question at first, the only thing that really seemed to register in her mind is, “you’re Jewish?”

“Technically,” Leo shrugs, “though I really like bacon cheeseburgers, and I haven’t attended a Shabbat in years, but I did have a Bar Mitzvah, so I suppose, yes?”

“Oh,” she says.

“That’s not a problem is it,” he asks quickly, already backpedalling, “I know you celebrate Christmas, so I guess this might be weird, but my family’s not really all that religious. The food’s really good?”

“It’s not a problem,” Jemma assures him, “just worried she'll completely hate me. You know what they say about jewish mothers.”

“What they say is completely true, I apologize in advance,” he says, with a laugh, “Seriously though, Jemma, as long as you’re not like some neo-nazi or serial killer or anything like that, she’ll love you.”  

The laugh she lets out at those words have nothing to do with his sense of humor, Fitz as charming as he is has no idea the irony of his words. Instead, he lights up thinking that he’s the one whose earned her laugh, his bright smile almost makes her feel bad, though the feeling passes after a moment.

She supposes what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him.

“I don’t know,” she says, when her laughter has finally subsided, “I could make a pretty good serial killer.”

“I think I would know if my best friend was a serial killer,” Fitz objects.

Of course, she can’t tell him then. She’s unsure if she ever could.

Not after spending a week in his childhood home, not after she’s given a soft pink quilt and a clay dreidel as a gift, and especially not when Fitz takes her downstairs into the basement showing her the lab he had set up as a child, experiments on the walls. She doesn’t even try to memorize the blueprints as she would have done before, instead she stands still a sense of awe washing over her.

As she lays in the guest rooms bed late at night staring up at the celine, she wishes she could change their circumstances. That she could be the person he so clearly made her out to be in his eyes. She lets her walls fall down, clutching onto anything in hopes of a stability that she has never truly had.

But when the sun rises she puts up her walls once more like nothing has changed.

She invites him to her house for Christmas, because it’s the appropriate thing to do, because she has to return his own offer. This has been the plan all along. Even if she now hates the plan.

Her parents approve of him.

They naturally take to him, meld into the sort of people that Leopold Fitz would have imagined them to be. The Simmons family is used to changing who they are that way nobody else suspects anything, and Fitz ends up a fly in their trap.

Her parents offer to show him around their home, when Jemma finds that the thought of doing so herself to be repulsive. She doesn’t want to see Fitz standing in the same lab where she was tutored by Hydra and melded into their perfect little sleeper agent.  

It's when they're eating dinner though, that Jemma finally cracks, as her mother leans towards her and states her approval, "he'll be a good recruit for hydra," she says beaming proudly and patting Jemma on the shoulder, “you’re so lucky to have found him.”

The thought of that makes Jemma so sick that she spends the night sitting on her bathroom floor until her stomach finally settles down.

She blames it on food poisoning when Fitz asks, lets him fuss over her all worried. Except that lie tastes so bitter on her tongue that it makes her sick all over again.

 

4.

They graduate the academy top of their class, get assigned to a lab together in Sci-Ops, and everything continues on in an almost mundane fashion.

She doesn’t feel very noteworthy or very remarkable for a while, she stares at chemical compounds and complicated formulas, it feels almost like working for a university, if one didn’t count the random moments a field agent would stumble into their lab, his hands covered in blood, trying to explain something or another.

She patches them up, while Fitz groans in the corner, though whether that has to do with his squeamishness or his detest for field agents is unclear to her.

Their lab space is disrupted so often that Jemma gets used to it, and when an agent stumbles in to see them, she’s the one that steps up to deal with it.

This time however, the man standing before them, in the standard SHIELD suit is all too familiar to her. He smiles at her, a flicker of recognition there, he has teeth like a shark. He spells it all out slowly, a field mission, a team for the two of them.

“We haven’t passed our field tests,” Jemma insists.

“That doesn’t matter,” he responds, before handing the folder to her, “we’ll expect a decision from both of you by tomorrow.”

That night she convinces Fitz to get smashingly drunk with her, they look over the folder and Jemma admits, “I’ve always wanted to be a field agent.”

“I always sort of fancied myself of being a bit like James Bond,” Fitz says sheepishly ducking his head, “Sadly, I can’t stand martini’s, regardless of whether they are shaken or stirred.”

She laughs so hard she’s not certain if she can even breath, says, “oh Fitz,” leaning her head onto his shoulder, before saying words she will most certainly regret, “let’s do it.”

The next day, after they accept the position from SHIELD, another folder ends up under her door, much like the files she had received when she first joined the academy, they detailed the accomplishments of her future teammates, but most importantly they told her who was loyal to Hydra and who was loyal to SHIELD.

That’s why she wasn’t surprised at all when Ward jumped out of a plane to save her, then whispered “hail hydra” into her ear as if those words would calm her down, as if they were her salvation.

 

5.

Jemma had been told that there was a chance she might always be a sleeper agent, that they might never get called to action. And as the years past she had stopped looking, she had felt every bit a SHIELD agent.

Until, things changed.

It happens so suddenly Jemma feels almost like she’s jumped out of that plane again, the ground underneath her feet doesn’t feel stable and the thought of stepping up is one that has her hesitating once more.

All her mother’s talks of duty and legacy, all the men in black suits and white smiles, all the times she had whispered “hail hydra” into the cold night air, had done nothing to make her more prepared for the moment when it became a reality.

Out of the shadows and into the light, comes the encoded message, but Jemma feels safer in the shadows so she keeps her mouth shut. When Agent Hand’s men break into the room she’s hiding out in, her lips remain sealed, Jemma is already well aware who in this room is and is not Hydra, and she knows she’s drastically outnumbered.

She lets people assume what they well, it’s easier that way, and if she’s assumed to be just another SHIELD agent then it’s for the best. It keeps her alive, and that’s all she cares about.

That and the fate of a certain engineer.

She knows he must think she’s dead as she listens in on the conversation, but her hands still shake as she hears his answer. Its a hard emotion to place, she’s proud of him and yet so angry at the same time.

“You’re going to suffer for what you’ve done,” his voice shakes over the words, and she feels as if he’s saying them to her, even though she’s standing a room away protected by metal walls and years of lies, “And I- I plan on being a big part of that.”

When she hugs him later, when they’re safe again, Jemma feels herself begin to break. She buries her head in his shoulder and holds on like that moment could last forever, wishing that they could stay there in limbo between peace and the end of everything she’s know, but eventually she has to pull away. She wipes the tears from his cheeks and assures him that they’re safe, that they’re alive, and most importantly that everything is going to be alright.   

 

6.

She never calls him Leo.

At first, its just because they're at the academy, everybody goes by their last names there. He introduces himself as Fitz and the name just sticks.

Then as she becomes closer and closer to him it becomes a matter of principle.

She remembers an age old warning, that naming things meant getting attached to them, but Fitz wasn't a kitten that she would have to sell. He was a person, a person that she honestly cared about. So she put up those walls, refused to call him by his first name, even when he said hers like a prayer, so desperate and clear that he needs her now more than ever.  

She can’t do it, can’t let herself get attached, because it would hurt all the more in the end.

Except the end is coming sooner now, she sees the signs around them, SHIELD won’t be able to pull themselves together after this, Hydra will win.

So she finds other ways to distance herself from him, spends more time with Triplett and pretends she doesn’t notice how Fitz stares at her back when she walks away from him time and time again.

When Agent Koenig asks her why she’s still there now that SHIELD has fallen.

She finds herself admitting in a moment of weakness, “Honestly, I’m not entirely sure.”  

 

8.

“Tell me you’re not Hydra,” he says, and she can tell that he’s already breaking.

She hesitates for a moment, contemplating telling it all now, while she has a chance. There had been so many times before, chances she never took, and now it feels too late.

“What,” she asks, almost begging for her to have heard him wrong, for Fitz not to push the issue for once.

“I know it’s ridiculous, but I just need to hear you say it.”

She can imagine how the betrayal would look on his face if she admit the truth, she remembers all too clearly how he had broken down when he learned the truth about ward. She won’t put him through that again unless she has to, so she lets out a light breath and says the words that he wants to hear, “I’m not Hydra.”

It’s only as the words leave her lips that she realizes just how much she wishes that they were true.

She imagines a different reality, a world in which the man with a shark toothed smile had never approached her as a child. Where Jemma had lived on blissfully unaware of the corruption around her, where she succeeded because of her intelligence, not before of men in suits pulling strings for her. She imagines what it would be like to live and breathe SHIELD as Fitz so clearly does. She wonders how much she would hurt knowing all the betrayal around her, she wonders if she would feel as lost as she does. 

But there's no point in imagining what if situations, instead she has to face the reality, so she meets Fitz's eyes and cuts him off, "I wouldn't," she tells him. 

“I don’t know what I’d do,” Fitz says.

“You’ll never have to find out,” she replies, knowing it’s those very words he will replay in his head when he finds out the truth.

They're the same words that she replays in her head over the next few days, lying awake at night, her lies haunting her like nightmares that she can no longer escape.

There's shadows under her eyes the next day, that she can't seem to hide no matter how much concealer she puts on. She can't help herself from thinking that there's some sort of extended metaphor in that, as she stares into the mirror, letting out a tiny bitter laugh, until it hurts to much to continue on. 

She's come to hate the shadows. 

 

0.

“I tried to tell you,” she says as if that will make any difference now, staring down the barrel of a gun and trying to keep her voice steady, “I tried to say it too many times to count, I just never found the right words until it was too late.”  

“Jemma,” he says her name, she can tell he’s wish for her to tell him that this is a joke, that this isn’t how their story ends.

“Don’t make this any harder than it has to be,” she says as her own voice finally breaks.

“Just tell me,” he begs, “was any of this real?”

In the end, she’s not even sure who really is Jemma Simmons.

Though there’s a woman with blood on her hands, standing across from the person that she cares about the most, taking what could very well be her last few breaths, and she realizes that’s whose she’s really been all along.

If this if she had a choice of last words, this would be it. For the first time in her life, the word like a prayer on her lips, because no other words seem to fit, she just says, “Leo.”

  



End file.
